Lightweight and built for speed, it is designed mainly for source editing, and performs syntax highlighting and inline function reference for many different languages. There is a standalone .exe available also, intended for USB flash drives. SciTE shares some features with other editors based on the Scintilla editing component such as Geany and Notepad++.

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SciTE is highly configurable. Although there is no graphical preferences window, settings can be altered by editing plain text configuration files.[2] It is possible to have different settings for each language and project, as well as global or per user options. There are menu options in the standard install to open these files in the editor. These allow a high level of customization over things like shortcut keys, tabbing, code folding, fonts, and syntax highlighting.[3]

In addition, the Lua programming language is embedded in SciTE, allowing the user further customization. One can write Lua scripts that have access to the contents of the buffer and the Scintilla API. The scripts can be triggered by a shortcut key, or on an event, providing the possibility for implementing auto-complete or other hook.

As early as 2003, 21 localizations of the menu texts and support of 36 different programming languages and other code formats was available, and the editor was capable of automatic conversion between line separator styles of different platforms and of detecting Unicode files.[2] SciTE can export plain text files in PDF format.[4]

Features include Replace in Selection, regular expression replace with subgroups, find in files, code folding, API files, copy formatted, abbreviations, multiple selection and support for variable width fonts. The editing layout consists of multiple tabs containing source, and additionally an output pane that displays output from scripts that have been run.

SciTE supports syntax highlighting of many languages. The full list of recognized languages can be found in the official documentation.[3] SciTE does not properly support Right-to-Left languages like Arabic; this is a limitation of the underlying Scintilla engine.